


Drawing Out the Line

by treaddelicately



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Post-Endgame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-13 04:55:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28772700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/treaddelicately/pseuds/treaddelicately
Summary: Contrary to popular belief, Wanda wasn't a mind reader. Maybe if she was, she would have seen the bullet coming.Or, Bucky and Wanda figure out how to navigate the world post-Blip, together.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Wanda Maximoff
Comments: 12
Kudos: 101





	Drawing Out the Line

**Author's Note:**

  * For [myracingthoughts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/myracingthoughts/gifts).



> To celebrate the release of WandaVision today, earnmysong, myracingthoughts, and I decided to put together a little Winterwitch exchange! Nat prompted me with ' **offering the other your coat** ', which I... took a decidedly different direction, haha.
> 
> Keep an eye out for their wonderful fics as well! We all just really wanted to celebrate our girl and if things got angsty, well, that's on me. Special thanks to yourtoxic_valentine for looking at this for me when I was real nail-bitey about it.
> 
> You'll also notice in this fic that it's mostly canon compliant all the way through Endgame, except for Wanda/Vision as a romantic pairing. Enjoy! xoxo

Contrary to popular belief, Wanda wasn’t a mind reader.

Not in the typical fashion. She couldn’t lock eyes onto someone from across a room and listen in on the song stuck in their head, hear all about their deepest fantasies without lifting a finger. She wouldn’t want to violate anyone’s privacy in that way even if she could.

Maybe if she could, she would have seen the bullet coming.

One minute, she was perched on a rooftop, waiting for the jet and watching Sam circle overhead from a safe distance. The mission itself was over, the weapon retrieved and the bad guys disposed of. Bucky was making quick work of tying up the rest so they could be brought in for questioning.

The next minute, everything went horribly wrong.

“You gonna take all day, Barnes? I got a show to catch at home,” Sam chuckled over the comms.

“Don’t see you down here helping, bird brain,” Bucky grumbled back. “Go a lot faster with more than one—”

Wanda thought her comm had gone dead. She tapped her ear twice, waiting for it to come back online, but it beeped to let her know it was still active.

And then she heard the choking.

There was no time to think or react, only to _do_. He was still inside, she’d left him alone, and no amount of running or flying was going to get her back to him fast enough.

She destroyed two stairwells on her way down to the ground floor of the warehouse and landed beside him so hard that the concrete floor cracked, spiraling out around her as she dropped to her knees. Blood seeped out of his tactical vest, staining the navy blue of his shirt, coating his fingers where they clutched at an injury she couldn’t see.

“No,” Bucky growled, surprisingly fierce for the color draining out of his face. “Get outta here, Wanda.”

“Not going to happen,” Wanda breathed, pulling off her coat. “I’m not leaving you.”

The danger was a moot point. Sam was babbling over the comms, handling the rogue single-handedly, but it didn’t matter because the damage was already done. Bucky was bleeding and he wasn’t trying to get up, and that was enough to send Wanda’s heart into a frenzy.

In all the time she’d known him, she had never seen Bucky take an injury without powering through it like a brazen fool. She’d called him an idiot before, laughed about his inability to admit to his pain, but the truth was, she’d have given anything in that moment to watch him grit his teeth and stand up.

She spread her coat over his torso, pressing firmly to the source of all the blood to hide her shaking hands. Bucky groaned and his body tensed, his face screwed up and twisted so painfully that it ripped Wanda to shreds.

Sam asked her questions and she heard herself answer from far away, as though listening through a closed door.

“Wan.” Bucky’s vibranium hand, slick with blood, closed around one of her wrists. “I’m—”

“You,” Wanda interrupted firmly, her throat tight. “Are going to be just fine.”

She refused to allow a single contrary thought enter her mind, not when the red of her coat darkened with more of his blood, not when his breathing started to stutter and his eyes slid closed. Not even when Sam and the medics arrived and forced her to move away so they could tend to his motionless body.

He _had_ to be fine. She’d lost far too much to lose him, too.

* * *

They’d done it a hundred times before that. In sync, effortless, like they were always meant to work together. 

Being interrogated by the United States government tore them both into pieces. Bucky had to answer for his war crimes, and Wanda for daring to exist as an enhanced individual without a visa. The politics of it all were mind-melting, exhausting, and seemingly never ending.

Nothing but bickering from senators who couldn’t agree on how to deal with them, lawyers who asked the same questions over and over, and a 24 hour news cycle that made it impossible for them to travel outside the secured gates of the new compound for months.

It was impossible to walk through hell without recognizing another tortured soul, and both of them had fire licking at their insides. Rather than suffer alone, they climbed onto the pyre together and held on for dear life.

When they came out the other side, as free as possible under a revised version of the Accords, they’d stitched each other back together with mutual respect and a need to keep the other safe. They were a team, Wanda and Bucky and Sam, the people left behind after a nightmare just trying to find their way together.

No more world-ending events, no more alien invasions, just run-of-the-mill bad guys and a chance to stretch their superhero legs when needed. And it was _fun_.

“Hey, Wanda, you’ve got…” Bucky gestured wildly at his head as the Quinjet’s ramp shut behind them. “In your hair…”

Her attempts to shake whatever had lodged itself into her hair were futile until he helped, pulling a chunk of drywall from the strands and holding it up for her to see.

Wanda laughed. “Occupational hazard, I suppose. I wonder why I even bother doing anything with it at all.”

“You two are real cute,” Sam called from the cockpit. “But we’ve got a debrief to prep for, if you’re all done flirting?”

It wasn’t the first time he’d made a comment like that, about the nature of their relationship. 

How Bucky only seemed comfortable touching someone when he was pressing his hand to Wanda’s back, guiding her through an open door. How Wanda had never laughed so much as when Bucky did his very best mocking Steve Rogers impersonation and reminded them all of their patriotic duties before each mission.

Usually, they just rolled their eyes and ignored him. But Wanda watched James as he settled in one of the jump seats, the crinkles at the corners of his eyes, the half-smile on his lips as he beckoned her over to join him, and her heart jumped in her chest.

She’d never tell him to his face, but maybe Sam was more observant than any of them gave him credit for.

* * *

Sometimes, if they were alone and the music they played was just right, Bucky would tell her stories about Brooklyn.

Most of them included Steve and the trouble they got into as wandering teenagers in a rapidly growing city. Some of them were about his family, his ma and pop and his little sister Becca, and usually those were happy too. Every once in a while, though, his eyes would glaze over and he would trail off in the middle of a tale.

Wanda never pushed. She just held his hand and waited. If they were lucky, he’d catch it, like a record finding its place after skipping off track, but usually he couldn’t.

“Memories are all jumbled,” he sighed one night, as though he needed to explain. “It’s hard to sort ‘em out.”

“Are you sure it is not just your old age?”

He squinted and flicked a piece of popcorn in her direction, pulling a girlish laugh from her throat as she batted it away in a flash of red.

“I’m hurt, doll. That cut me deep.”

Wanda smiled smugly, giving his hand a little squeeze. He hadn’t taken it away, and she wasn’t going to be the first to let go. “I’ve seen you take worse.”

“Ah, that’s true.” He nodded. “And I’ve seen you dish out worse.”

Her edges _were_ harder, after everything. So much loss that she had endured, and for what?

A world that didn't want her. 

A panel full of security consultants who called her a weapon. Men in suits who would put a collar around her neck, if they could. People who flinch away from her in the streets when they recognize her. 

Some days it was hard to remember why she bothered at all. Why not settle down like Tony had, find a quiet place to call her own? Stop putting herself on the line for people who would rather she never existed at all?

“Are you frightened of me, Sergeant Barnes?”

Bucky turned to look at her then, his steel eyes capturing hers and holding them steady. 

Wanda could see every bit of it inside him. All the life he’d lived, all the guilt he’d taken on his shoulders. She watched him every day, trying to make some kind of good with it all. Making amends for things that he was not responsible for. Things that were done _to_ him.

Things she could do to him, if she wanted. 

She could sneak into his head and undo everything Shuri had fixed at the snap of her fingers. She could bring his worst nightmares to the forefront. She could turn him into a monster, and do it easily.

She wondered what he saw when he looked at her.

“Wanda.” His metal hand closed around hers. It’s warm to the touch, solid and grounding and gentle, just like his voice. Holding her tight and keeping her centered. “Are you scared of _me_?”

Like second nature, her lips shaped the only answer that had ever been true. “No.”

Bucky nodded, his thumb tracing a little circle just below her knuckles. “Then there’s your answer. We’re a team, right?”

And they were. A shell, fractured and pieced together out of people who were meant to be elsewhere, but they were something.

And Wanda wasn't afraid.

* * *

The first time James kissed her was over dinner.

Well, not quite dinner, actually, but the beginning stages. The three of them, her and Bucky and Sam, had fallen into a routine of Thursday nights at Wanda’s, trying out new recipes in her kitchen and an ever-growing list of television shows they wanted to watch as a group.

As a family.

“Knew I forgot something,” Sam grumbled halfway through chopping onions. “Yo, Barnes, take over for me. I left that good whiskey in my room.”

“You’re better with the knife than he is,” Wanda teased, rewarded with a swat as Sam ducked behind her to get to the door. 

Bucky chuckled and took over his spot, cutting through the rest of the vegetables with practiced ease and probably more flourish than necessary.

“He doesn’t even know how good he’s got it,” he sighed. “Give just about anything to be able to catch a buzz these days.”

Wanda cocked her head, always intensely curious when she learned something new about him. 

“You can’t get drunk?”

Bucky shrugged. “Side effect of the serum. Metabolize it too fast. I could drink a whole fifth and never feel a thing.”

“I’ll have to remember that.” Wanda laughed, turning away to check on the bread in the oven. “At least you never have to worry about making a fool of yourself.”

“I don’t know about that.”

She thought he was joking, but when she straightened, Bucky had his hand on the back of his neck and a sheepish look on his face that she’d never seen before.

“What do you mean?”

“I always worry about that, around you. Making myself look like an idiot.”

Wanda’s heart clenched in her chest, both painful and wonderful at the same time. Not butterflies in the stomach, but something more vivid and real.

“Well, that’s ridiculous. You don’t have to worry about that with me. I like you just how you are.”

“Is that right?” Bucky set the knife down on the cutting board and angled himself towards her. 

She could have stopped it. Could have dispelled the tension in the air with a dismissive joke or an excuse about the food, but that would have meant denying them both something they wanted.

Instead, Wanda leaned her hip on the counter and tilted her chin up, her eyes dipping from the sweet intensity of his gaze down to his lips. “Yes, that’s right.”

He was less hesitant than she imagined he’d be, with his hand in her hair and his body pressing hers lightly into the counter. When Bucky kissed her, he did it like he meant it, like he would have stayed there forever if she would have let him. Wanda, for her part, just held on tight to keep from floating to the ceiling.

The compound was too new for the door to make much noise when Sam came back, but the squeak of his sneakers on the tile and his audible groan was plenty warning enough.

“Are y’all for real? I leave for five minutes and this is what happens?”

Wanda ducked her head, her cheeks burning bashfully, but Bucky grinned at their friend with some of the childishness from his Brooklyn days back in his eyes.

“You don’t like it, eat dinner somewhere else,” he said, bending to kiss her again.

After that, Thursdays were dinners with Sam, and Fridays were just for the two of them.

* * *

Spending the night was a touchy, tricky conversation.

It went without saying that Bucky was swamped with nightmares more often than not. His demons chased him into his dreams, into a place Shuri couldn’t fix and Wanda couldn’t follow, where he had to wrestle with them alone. Sometimes the wrestling carried over and he ended up with slashed pillows or broken furniture as a result.

Wanda wasn’t much better off. She’d put plenty of holes into the walls of her room, fighting off the shadows in her nightmares. 

Suffice it to say, neither of them wanted to hurt the other. So as much time as they spent wrapped around each other in their waking hours, as good as it felt to curl up in his arms, Wanda agreed that it was much safer for them to separate to sleep.

Until one Friday night, when the need was too much and they dropped into bed in a tangled mess of wandering hands and colliding lips, and there seemed to be no safer place than the four walls of Wanda’s tiny bedroom.

They laid together after, Wanda’s hair spilling over Bucky’s chest and his fingers dragging idly through the strands. She was barely hanging on by a thread, nearly asleep from the steady sound of his breathing and his heart keeping rhythm under her ear.

“I should go,” Bucky murmured.

To anyone else, it could have sounded like an excuse to slip away and avoid the awkwardness of a morning after, but Wanda knew better. She had no misconceptions about the depth of his feelings for her or how it pained him to leave just as much as it hurt her to stay behind.

So she lifted her head.

“Don’t,” she said softly. “Stay.”

Bucky sighed and she felt the barest tug at her scalp as his hand sunk further into her hair. “What if I hurt you, doll?”

Wanda twisted in his grip, lifting her hand directly in front of his voice. Her fingers, woven through with red and glowing dimly against his face, seemed to catch his attention.

“I think I can handle myself.”

Perhaps it was a dirty trick, leveraging her abilities this way. The last thing he would ever do was underestimate her or want her to think she wasn’t capable, so of course he grunted an approval and settled back against the pillows.

Wanda tried to get comfortable but the tension in his body was distracting. His hand had never stilled, still petting her hair, and the weight of his vibranium arm on her waist was a comfort, but she wanted him to relax. To feel secure here, with her.

Carefully, she slid one of her legs between his. The only reaction she received was a gentle kiss to the top of her head, so Wanda continued on, bringing her fingers to his chest to trace patterns across his skin. Too firm to tickle (as though she could tickle the Winter Soldier), but gentle enough that Bucky’s breathing began to steady after a few minutes. She hummed under her breath, taking him apart bit by bit with soft touches until he started to go slack and all she could feel from his mind was quiet peace.

Neither of them dreamed that night. 

They woke in the morning still tangled together, and nothing had ever felt safer.

* * *

Wanda stared blankly at her red hands. 

Men in suits appeared after the EMTs took Bucky away on a stretcher, waving away Sam’s explanations to interrogate her instead. They still answered to the government, after all, and they had questions about one of their most valuable assets being brought down in broad daylight.

She didn’t have answers for them.

His vest, the one they cut off of him in the ambulance, was pierced cleanly by a weapon they’ve never encountered before. No one could find a bullet casing, a discarded gun, nothing to discern why he was currently fighting for his life.

The hospital hallway was blocked off, allowing for a modicum of privacy so she could sit on the floor and begin the mourning process.

After all, it was only natural that the universe would take this from her, too. Dull resignation began to set in as Wanda went through the list in her head.

First her family, bit by bit, when she’d least expected it. Her mother and father, taken away because of someone else’s war. Her brother, her dumb, sweet brother, sacrificing himself so that someone else could live.

Her faith in _goodness_ , gone with Hydra and Ultron’s manipulations. The team she’d tried to fit herself into, shattered with half of the universe by the fanatical desires of a madman

And now James. The only person she’d ever felt truly able to give her heart to, and the universe wanted him back, too.

Sam sat beside her after a little while, his arm around her shoulders and his voice low and soothing.

“He’s gonna be fine.” His shrink voice, Bucky had called it. “Barnes is too stubborn to die, you know that.”

She didn’t know what to say to that. They’d always been on borrowed time, after all.

He should have died falling from a train car in the 1940s. She shouldn’t have survived the bombing in place of her parents, or the loss of Sokovia instead of Pietro. 

Maybe it was justice, served too late.

Wanda knew Sam would argue, to tell her to keep hope, and she couldn’t bear to hear a word of it. So she didn’t say anything at all.

She just leaned her head on his shoulder and tried to brace herself for the inevitable.

* * *

She wasn’t dreaming of anything in particular, but being pulled back to consciousness startled her enough that Wanda nearly put a hole in the wall.

“Wanda!” Sam gripped her arms firmly, staring her down until she blinked and her eyes focused. “Hey, hey, easy.”

She felt as though she’d swallowed a stone. “James?”

Sam smiled. “He’s awake. They said you can go see him.”

Awake. _Alive_.

If she could have flown through the walls, Wanda would have. She barely had the restraint to let a nurse lead her through a set of doors, down a hallway, and past a curtain into a room with machines beeping incessantly.

Bucky sat propped up in bed, his matted hair tucked behind his ears and his lips pale.

“Hey,” he said.

Wanda’s throat constricted, her eyes stinging painfully. “James,” she whispered.

After spending every minute of the last twelve hours imagining him dead, it was strange to cross the room and sit down next to his bed, to close her hand around his and feel the warmth of his skin on hers.

“You’re okay?”

“Okay’s not the word I’d use.” He grimaced, shifting slightly against his pillows. Wanda leaned forward to help where she could, but he shook his head. “I’ll be alright. You get the son of a bitch?”

Wanda averted her gaze to the window, regret coloring her words. “Sam did.”

Silence enveloped them, aside from the machine keeping track of his abnormally low heart rate and the cuff inflating to check his blood pressure intermittently. Bucky’s thumb stroked circles on the back of her hand, urging her on, but Wanda stared out the window instead.

He only allowed her to wallow for a minute. “I’m right here, Wanda.”

“You almost weren’t.”

“Occupational hazard,” he said lightly. Wanda made a strangled sound instead of laughter, dragging a sigh out of him. “Come on. This stuff happens.”

Her eyes snapped back to his face in an instant, dark and intense. “You’re right. It happens. It always happens.”

Bucky’s gaze softened, a clear contrast to the churning distress inside her. He let go of her hand, opening his arms instead. “C’mere.”

She had every excuse in the world to refuse him. He’d just been shot, the nurses wouldn’t like her on the bed, she could hurt him, and a thousand others. But twelve hours of imagining a life without him sent Wanda climbing up anyway, tucking her body carefully against his on his least injured side. 

Bucky wrapped an arm around her while she tucked her head under his chin.

“None of it’s ever gonna be easy,” he reminded her. “And I know we don’t deserve any of it. But if it means we can keep other people from going through what we’ve gone through? That’s worth a bullet to me.”

Wanda hated that he was right.

“And what about us? What do we deserve?”

“More than this,” Bucky sighed into her hair. “But this is what we got, doll. We gotta make the most of it.”

They deserved better, both of them. 

There would always be two separate parts of her, constantly in opposition with one another. The side that wanted to scream about the injustice of it all was a ten year old girl, giggling at a dinner table with the family that she loved.

But the other part of her, the one that had kept her up at night for so long? It was a woman who had walked through hell and found a kindred spirit along the way. The part of her that knew he was right.

They had a responsibility to make the world a better place for everyone who came after them. For every other ten year old girl who dreamed of a better future. It wasn’t fair, but it was real. 

“Okay,” she whispered. “We’ll make the most of it. If you promise me something.”

“What’s that?”

Wanda lifted her head so he could see the plea on her face, clear as day. “That we do it together.”

“Together,” Bucky promised, cupping her chin in his hand. “Because we’re a team.”

And after everything she’d lost and gained along the way, that was enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for much for reading! All kudos and comments are cherished and appreciated. 💜


End file.
